Almost Firsty McFirsty

THIS IS NONSENSE! FIRSTY McFIRSTERSON IMPERSONATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW!

Increased applicant quality does not automatically follow from increased tuition rates.

"It is in everyone’s interest to recruit new first-year students and to retain them in the second and third year."

And raising the tuition is going to attract new students? Stellar thinking there, Cooley. Going even more in debt for a low-ranked law school is everyone's idea of a good time.

the legal "profession" is totally saturated due to the huge oversupply of new lawyers pumped out by diploma mills like this cooley. And the employment and salary data is fudged.

The ABA house of cards is falling apart and Cooley is freaking out. Now that students realize what a scam going to a lower tier law school is and schools do not have the pipe dream of a bloated first year salary to sell, Cooley is taking drastic measures to force its students to deceive applicants into buying their false promises.

They are doing an exemplary job of teaching how to become a certified bullshit merchant. Teach by example and those students will pay up.

Tuition to the Moon!!!!

I'd never hire a Grand Rapids Cooley grad.

Varnum Secure

Might as well rename it the Amway School of Law....

DISCLOSURE OF LAW SCHOOL RECENT GRADUATE EMPLOYMENT DATA SHOULD BE REGULATED BY STATE LAW.

Boom. Easier than holding your breath waiting for ABA to revoke law school certs.

Damn. Was just going to post a "WTF?!" but Elie corrected his "How students will react to this?"

SMU rules over Cooley. Rules!

After the wave of students looking to escape the recession, law school applications/enrollments should fall across the board as private financing options dry up.

The only way any lender would take on the risk of financing a legal education is if the gov't backstops everything (which worked out great in the mortgage industry).

To the student noted in the original post- All Cooley scorn is fair and merited

This place seems more and more like a Ponzi scheme, though unclear who they're paying out to.

DROP OUT NOW!!! SAVE YOURSELVES BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!

I find it hard to believe that many schools are taking Cooley transfers. Really? You have THAT many people that manage to transfer? Who takes them? Florida Coastal?

20th Yes! My 4th TTTTier LS definitely prepared me for this!

Which is more of a toilet, Cooley or Wayne State? It amuses me that anyone would go to either.

T10 Secure

Hopefully this will drive that sad excuse for a law school out of business. Won't people wake up to the fact that they are spending many thousands on a garbage degree? The place is a joke.

Revenue drops so they raise tuition... Just like the Fed Government - taxes decrease so they raise taxes. Yeah, good luck with that.

#11... that's a very apt comparison.

I actually met the douchebag son of one of the founders of Cooley Law School (he's a graduate of same to boot) at a cocktail party.

He followed daddy's footsteps to become a state judge in Michigan... but was too dumb to understand even the simplest rules.

He was forced to resign from the bench for soliticiting donations for his re-election campaign... while sitting on the bench... from attorneys appearing before him.

Thanks Cooley... keep cranking them out.

Anyone else think that Justice Cooley is rolling over in his grave at being associated with this TTTToilet?

BTW, I love how the supply and demand functions work in the minds of the TMC administrators. Justice Cooley would not approve.

17 - It's not a Ponzi scheme. In a Ponzi scheme, the people who get in at the ground floor make bank. At Cooley, everyone is fucked, from the first graduate to the last.

I am not sure why anyone would want to attend this cesspool of a "school." I wouldn't hire a janitor with a JD from this school, much less a paralegal. Yet people will continue to enroll in this school and throw good money away to pursue an illusory chance to live a good life. In the end, massive student loans, a worthless degree, a life of abject poverty, drugs and possibly staring down the barrel of a gun. Is this your dream?

Thirdsy McThirderson, please try to get a life.

- Fursty McFursterson

I like that the student who was quoted said that he knew students who chose to attend Cooley over other options "for personal reasons." As anyone familiar with Michigan knows, Cooley is a joke of a law school, a place where students who graduate from state colleges with 3.0's and a liberal arts degree decide to go to delay the real world for 3 years. That anyone would have a personal reason to subject themselves to the embarrassment of obtaining a JD from this place is ridiculous.

29 = University of Michigan undergraduate and law school student who was no-offered last summer (and, though attended UofM for 7 years, has only once seen his team beat Ohio State).

Cooley still has a better bar passage rate than Howard

Cooley still has a better bar passage rate than Howard

-Cooley Secure

Generally, the smart students who happened to have trouble on the LSAT for one reason or another (undiagnosed disabilities like ADD, etc) go to this school, discover their disabilities, get treatment, kick ass, and transfer out. Cooley is a tough school, those who transfer out often get their JDs from high ranked schools.

Fact: the best law schools are the most expensive
Fact: Cooley is now more expensive
---
Conclusion: Cooley is moving up the rankings!

COOLEY = THIRD TIER TOILET!!

PE-

Take out the first part of your post and you are describing 90% of students in tier 1 schools at this point.

I know someone who transferred from Cooley to Arkansas. He has a job lined up, so I guess it can work out.

37-I think CBS is making a TV movie about that guy

I miss the guy who asks if the mentioned school is ABA accredited, etc. I thought he'd own this thread.

Who gives a fuck about this TTT?

"It is in everyone’s interest to recruit new first-year students and to retain them in the second and third year."

When I read this, my memory was jogged. After a quick search I remember what triggered it:

"Why do Pyramid Schemes Fail?

Pyramid schemes are inherently injurious to consumers because as a mathematical certainty, they are doomed to collapse. As in the case of chain letters that require a payment, only the people at the very top make any money.

The only way anybody can make money through a pyramid scheme or chain letter is if participants in levels below them are defrauded into giving money based upon a rapidly diminishing promise of eventually getting something in return.

Eventually they must break down because the pool of possible recruits becomes exhausted and recruitment stops. Those at the bottom of the pyramid, the vast majority of the participants, lose money because there is no one below them.

They won't get their money back or earn their promised fortune because no one is beneath them in the pyramid adding new money to the pot. All pyramid schemes will begin to die when later recruits don't sign on in numbers large enough to pay off the earlier recruits."

Bill Buchanan and Special Agent Larry Moss were the only principles who didn't make it to Day 8 from Day 7. The same can't be said for many of the 08 or '09 grads.

Understand that currently from birth until death this profession is a pyramid scheme in all but name. Hopefully this recession will change that last part.

Cooley is as legitimate as a pyramid scam. What they do is truly evil.

States need to start requiring that all law schools publish employment statistics under the same penalties as executives of publicly held corporations. Mean, median, and modal salaries should be reported by quartile rank at graduation, and non-response counted as "unemployed."

This is addressed to 29 and everyone else who insists on disparaging lower ranked law schools. While it is undoubtedly true that most people who attend lower ranked schools are less intelligent and/or lazier than people who attend top schools, there are many exceptions. I work at a V100 firm that, in addition to recruiting from top law schools, also recruits one or two students from each of the three third tier law schools in our market. These students are generally within the top 5 in their classes and editors on their law reviews. I have found these recruits to be just as intelligent and generally harder working than many graduates from Harvard, Penn (my own alma mater), Michigan, etc.

There are some people who have legitimate personal reasons that prevent them from picking up stakes to attend the highest ranking law school they can get into. There are also people who blew off college, but later grew up and went back to school. They got bad grades as undergrads because they were immature, not because they were stupid.

I would much rather take on an associate that distinguished himself at even the worst accredited law school than someone who got to Harvard and then sat on his laurels, graduating in the middle of the class.

To give you an idea of just HOW bad Cooley's rep is, I have an anecdote.

I attended a T-14 that accepted a Cooley transfer that was #1 in his class (I don't care where you are -- being #1 in a 800+ person class is still fairly impressive).

During OCI, he only received one call-back (this was 3 years ago when 1 callback was unheard of). He went to the interview, and the interviewing partner told him "we have never hire a Cooley grad, and we never will. Come back to us as a 3L so we can see your grades."

The guy ended up graduating top 5% from the T14, and even at that time (right as the legal market was just starting to crumble) he had not had a single large-firm offer.

This is a guy who was #1 at Cooley, and in the top 5% at a T-14.

Granted, he was a bit of an odd character. However, I can tell you based upon my conversations with him that his cooley past came up again and again at interviews, and again and again he received ding letters . . .

23 nailed it. This is a typical example of liberal economics. Revenue down? Just raise prices. Problem solved.

I refuse to personally address the author of post no. 44. He is clearly neither a peer nor does he/she work for a peer firm. Moreover, his hypothesis just doesn't hold water when you are talking about about lower tiered graduates. Perhaps it would be true if you are talking about a school such as Vanderbilt, where I would consider the top student of the graduating class to be just as bright and hardworking than the top 25% graduate at a peer law school. However, to compare a "top" Cooley grad with an average Yale law graduate is tantamount to saying that a Special Olympics decathalete "champion" can beat the last place finisher at the regular world championship event.

22 basically nailed it.

Cooley is a toilet bowl, flushing away the careers of its crappy students. Now it is a more expensive toilet bowl.

FLUSH!!!!

44, You're only V100, you'll never understand.

The problem isn't mass transfers. The problem is that Cooley has to fail out kids that should never have been accepted in the first place, which works out great for them because: they get the tuition from the student, and the student's lack of ability doesn't damage their bar passage or employment numbers.

24--

Wow, you found one corrupt-as-hell, criminal political hack from Cooley. Name a number between 1950 and 2006 inclusive, and I'll find you at least 50 Harvard law graduates from that numbered year who are even worse corrupt-as-hell, criminal political hacks.

The difference is, the latter have so anti-meritocratized the legal profession that they get presumptive placement in the most powerful lawyer ranks of society. Then, when their own Ponzi schemes (or their enabling of such) get discovered, they hide behind a cloak of self-dealt legal immunity compliments of the self-perpetuating FTT judiciary. Cooley is not the danger to the legal profession--it is the FTTs that teach entitlement to enabling a corporate criminal syndicate that should scare us.

Ethics is a joke in this profession. Elitist, self-entitled conspirator mercenaries now decide what is ethical. Talk about self-dealing. Imagine a doctor adjudicating whether he was negligent in his treatment of a patient--there would be pitchforks, torches, and incessant cries of injustice. But when FTT hacks do the same thing for other FTT criminal enabler hacks in their buddy network, we call it common law.

Hi guys, a little help please. I'm trying to decide between Cooley and Ave Maria. What should I do? i really want to be a corporate real estate lawyer.

How will the Cooley students react?

I'm thinking wipe the drool from their chins and tighten down the straps on their padded helmets.

I love how Cooley is ranked number 12 in its own ranking system that it created to draw attention away from its piss poor reputation. You would think that because it created the ranking, it would be number 1, or at least be top 5-10. Since it cannot even game its own system, you have to wonder why anyone would ever go there.

I love how Cooley is ranked number 12 in its own ranking system that it created to draw attention away from its piss poor reputation. You would think that because it created the ranking, it would be number 1, or at least be top 5-10. Since it cannot even game its own system, you have to wonder why anyone would ever go there.

52:

Your best play would be to avoid attending either, take the LSAT again, do better, and wait until you get into a T1 or T2 school (under the US News, and not Cooley, definition of rank)

Back when I was younger, I knew a whole bunch of Polish jokes. As time passed, however, Polish jokes became less and less prevalent, which I attribute 100% to the fact that once the Soviet Union fell, people started realizing how hot Polish chicks are and did not want to offend them. Now I recycle those old jokes and simply replace the word "Pollacks" with "Colley Grads".

56, I think 52's post was just trolling. How dare you introduce well intended advice into this discussion?

54, 55--

And somehow it is more believable that FTTs rank themselves at the top of ranking systems? An education from an FTT is not worth the paper it is printed on. Talk to an HLS grad about practicing law or applying law in the real world, and you'll hear about as coherent a response as if you asked a fencepost. Check that--the latter answer would be better, because the fencepost would not inundate you with incoherent verbal excrement that can't even be charitably described as "idiotic."

Yet, somehow, a well-reputed state school or "lower-ranked" private school is seen as an "inferior education," regardless of how good its writing program is, how reputed its clinical programs are, or what activities it boasts that actually somewhat mimic actual practice. The true, unadulterated embodiment of a farce.

I go Cooley. I no the law. Tort. Contract. I no these. My rite and reed good too. Cooley make me lawyer. All hear are lawyers- us all same.

Cooley grad agian. I hit button axidently. I edit law revue. It published me. My story was called "Laws is good. You shud follow them." Footnotes and everything. Big story.

60 -

Why Mrs. Lat, I didn't know you went to Cooley.

Cooley is engaging in an antitrust violation.

They know they have a monopoly on the country's best law education, so they're raising prices and reducing output to get monopoly rents.

63- Stop bad talk on Cooley. No monoply. I stay in hotel for house price. I win 10 dollars for butey pagent 2nd place.

60

63- Stop bad talk on Cooley. No monoply. I stay in hotel for house price. I win 10 dollars for butey pagent 2nd place.

60

Did anybody watch the Jets/Bills game yesterday. It felt like I was watching a Cooley grad debating the dormant commerce clause with a Touro grad.

21-- You clearly know nothing about the legal market in Detroit. And yes, there is a legal market in Detroit. It is dominated by Wayne State grads. If you look at every website for the "big" firms in Detroit, you will see that at least half of the attorneys come from Wayne. Everyone who went there can agree that they received a solid legal education, though without the frills and perks that most law students at top schools receive.

That being said, I realize that most of the people who read this blog are interested in the NYC, LA, etc. legal markets and don't care to work anywhere else. So why bash the people who do want to work in Michigan and around the city of Detroit? Someone has to do it, right?

21--- I like to respond with data. This is what Wayne State Law grads are doing--- note very few, if any, Cooley grads or any other schools aside from University of Michigan:

http://www.millercanfield.com/people.html?results

http://bodmanllp.com/attorneys.php?Search=true&keyword=Name+or+Keyword&PracticeID=&OfficeID=&LawSchoolID=2&AffiliationID=&PositionID=&LanguageID=&AdmissionID=

http://www.honigman.com/professionals/xprProfessionalResults1Hon.aspx?xpST=ProfessionalResults&Schools=94c59897-7c85-42d3-a6ac-90f3fd23d9da

http://dykema.com/bio/default.asp

http://butzel.com/bioppatsrch.cfm

http://www.krwlaw.com/attorneys

http://www.wnj.com/attorneys/list.aspx?Schools=e39b96ca-7de4-42ff-809a-0b6d27fde99d

http://www.varnumlaw.com/People/(ls)/1188

Quoted emailer here. 27 is the most entertaining hyperbole so far, and I mean that sincerely. I anticipated that the email would garner some amusing results.

45 is pretty frightening. Believe it or not, there are Cooley grads that go on to work with large firms, but that's nearly always the result of a pre-existing connection. Nearly all my informal discussions with partners have confirmed the reality of the no-Cooley policy to some degree, but this is the first I've heard of the school name simply being on the transfer transcript being such anathema.

44 pretty much nailed my situation in the second part of the second paragraph, except throw in HS and the LSAT (even after that, however, I did have options despite the hogwash assertions of 29). Certainly not an endorsement of my maturity, but I've grown up a lot over the past year, and while I'm not proud of my awful academic history, I did have a good time.

47, considering the size of Cooley's enrollment, I don't think the assertion of 44 is absurd at all; in, fact, I'd say that its statistically probable. Of course, I'm only a Cooley student, so I'd rather not risk spraining my fingers counting, but I'd be curious to see the mean and median performance of Cooley students who have transfered to T14 schools.

69- Great argument- "Cooley is good because anyone not completely retarded flees Cooley as soon as they are able."

70 - thank you for your excellent summary of my "argument". I'm actually shocked you were able to infer the underlying premise of my post and state it with such clarity. I can't believe I spent 3 paragraphs writing what you've artfully condensed into one concise statement. I am shamed.

I'd write more but I have to get to class. Tonight we're making a noodle-art outline of the dormant commerce clause!

Gee wizz, I guess 3:45 pm is when Wayne State trolling hour begins!

BTW, 72's class is in an hour but he has to leave now because he has to go through cooley's library which is well known for having tons of floor space- the main reason they do so well in thier own rankings. And 71, I'm not the asshole who is so insecure that he has to come on ATL and try to make myself feel better. Give me the money you give to Cooley and I'll take a dump in your lap. It's about the same as what you get from Cooley but at least I'll be leaving you with a warm meal.

BTW, 72's class is in an hour but he has to leave now because he has to go through cooley's library which is well known for having tons of floor space- the main reason they do so well in thier own rankings. And 71, I'm not the asshole who is so insecure that he has to come on ATL and try to make myself feel better. Give me the money you give to Cooley and I'll take a dump in your lap. It's about the same as what you get from Cooley but at least I'll be leaving you with a warm meal.

74 - Again, I realize I'm from Cooley, and I may not have a great grasp of the definition of irony, but your statement of "I'm not the asshole who is so insecure that he has to come on ATL and try to make myself feel better. " is dripping in it.

I will give you something though...if I was driven to visit ATL in order to make myself feel better, reading your posts would definitely help me achieve that end.

76- you realize where you're at? You must be #1 at Cooley.

Typical Cooley jerkoff response by 77. I love the smugness of morons. Too dumb to know how dumb they are.

Typical Cooley jerkoff response by 77. I love the smugness of morons. Too dumb to know how dumb they are.

Not even top 10. It was a bullshit and arbitrary decision though; if I had gotten the newer crayons, I would have booked torts.

I know. Us Cooley students are smug, ivory tower elitists. It's a label we humbly bear.

"My kid got into Cooley."
"What'd he have to do, open the door?"

Cooley really digs its own grave with its actions. Lets face it: there are plenty of other horrid third tier law schools, but EVERYONE has heard of Cooley!

Why? Because Cooley insists on undertaking actions that results in it being the laughing-stock of the legal community. Ranking itself in the T-14 based upon crocodile-statistics such as the size of its library is just truly absurd.

I have no doubt in my mind that the top 5 people in that school would likely be able to succeed at any top school. While at Cooley they are awarded the rank, "king of the idiots," they have at least proven themselves to be hard workers.

My only question is this: What about the other 795 students? Cooley does them a disservice by filling their minds with the belief that a graduating from Cooley will lead to success?

How have all these other students not realized that they are attending the laughing-stock of the law schools? Simple answer: they are idiots who actually fell for Cooley's self-ranking.

True Story:

Before I began attending law school at a T-20 school, a friend of mine from college told me she was going to Cooley - I had not heard of the school before and asked her about it -

her response: "I cant believe you haven't heard of it, its ranked like number 15 in the US"

I simply congratulated her and wondered why i wasnt applying to such a prestigious institution - I then called my stepmother (an attorney) to ask her about this "T-15 I had never heard of." My stepmother literally laughed out loud.

I really wonder if there is some sort of fraud claim that could be brought based upon their self-ranking. Because it really does help attract dumbasses who are none-the-wiser and could have gone to other schools that are more honest about their reputations.

69 - Congratulations on your decision to avoid abusing the semicolon like you did in your original email.

Cooley: Do me in the da butt!

85 - It's an unbreakable habit. I had that coming.

86 - You have me cumming too, my friend.

Oh yeahhhhhhhhh

84 - Technically, being already employed, they're digging OUR graves. Which brings us back to the disconnect.

McCooley Law Schoolery.

Sure, there will always be outliers and the top 5% to 10% to make it happen. Even a 50% failure rate hardly justifies the educational mission of this place.

True, Cooley and a host of other JD-for-sale programs can point to some success stories. This doesn't negate the fact that the US JD industry is a joke, using #s so suspect that a CEO, using similarly derived and marketed #s, would land in jail.

I fail to understand why all the elitist commenters care so much. If, by your own assertion, a Cooley degree offers little to no opportunities, then a Cooley grad does not threaten your future prospects in any way. So why the hell do you care where a complete stranger chose to go to school?

The answer is you don't care. You simply have an inferiority complex that needs soothing at the expense of others, so like a lemming you rush forth to the anonymous ATL comments to thumb your nose at "lesser students."

Sorry about your TPD.

- T25 grad w/ no personal investment in Cooley's rep

90 - Hi, Autoadmit!

Do me in da butt!
Okaaaaaaay

90 - perhaps you are correct about some of the other commenters.

I, prestigious author of 84, genuinely feel bad for most of Cooley's students because i think they were duped (perhaps deservedly so).

Also, JD factories like Cooley add to the argument that "anyone can make it through law school."

Schools like Cooley makes our profession look like its filled with a talentless mob of half-wits, and frankly it is.

So despite what you may think, im more worried about the systemic affects these kinds of schools have on the legal profession as an institution. I also feel like schools like Cooley, and "faculty" that opt to teach there, should not be making any money at all.

What personal reason could justify attendance at Thomas M Cooley? Were the other schools accredited? I remember one of my undergrad Deans trying to get me to compete in a speech contest -- first prize? A full ride to TMCLS. He was distraught when I refused to participate.

Cooley's "ranking" system is quite impressive. It is based on 30 factors, each one of which, they note, only accounts for around 3% (as if to prop up its validity). Never mind that nearly all of the factors are proxies for their ridiculous class size -- i.e. number of professors, number of class offerings, library square footage, etc. Then they throw in a few legitimate factors (LSAT, GPA, etc.) to create some appearance of credibility and there you go...

93 - Virility

McCooley Law Schoolery.

Sure, there will always be outliers and the top 5% to 10% to make it happen. Even a 50% failure rate hardly justifies the educational mission of this place.

True, Cooley and a host of other JD-for-sale programs can point to some success stories. This doesn't negate the fact that the US JD industry is a joke, using #s so suspect that a CEO, using similarly derived and marketed #s, would land in jail.

McCooley Law Schoolery.

Sure, there will always be outliers and the top 5% to 10% to make it happen. Even a 50% failure rate hardly justifies the educational mission of this place.

True, Cooley and a host of other JD-for-sale programs can point to some success stories. This doesn't negate the fact that the US JD industry is a joke, using #s so suspect that a CEO, using similarly derived and marketed #s, would land in jail.

68 - You didn't list Clark Hill, which also hires MSU grads. So does Dickinson Wright, and others.

But just to confirm - Yes, in the Detroit legal market, a Cooley degree is a badge of dishonor.

No significant firms even bother OCI'ing there, and why should they?

I've said it elsewhere - the only positive thing Cooley does is help student's from other regional schools get jobs in Michigan - because no law firm will hire a #1 Cooley grad over a top 25 grad from either Wayne or MSU.

And if someone was "duped" into going to Cooley because of Cooley's own rankings, that person is not intelligent enough to practice law.

Come on 67...I was born and raised in Detroit and earned a Michigan law degree. There is virtually no difference between Cooley and Wayne State: both are properly viewed as essentially worthless in the Detroit legal market and beyond.

This "blog" is populated by so many elitist douche-bags it’s amazing ATL has a reputation for being a general interest law blog, instead of what it really is - a place for middle of the class T1 law students to read about the jobs they wished they could land, and comment about how great they are, despite the fact that they have NO JOB.

People dog on the D-Town (Detroit) market, but that worked out fine for me. Since people don't want to stick around, there was a unique niche for native Michiganders with good grades - I interviewed with most large firms in the Detroit market, landed a summer associateship, got the job offer, and now my life is looking fantastic.

I went to MSU College of Law, top 'o the class, earned full tuition for the 2 and 3L years, law review, interned for two Federal Judges (Dist. and 6th Cir.) and have a job waiting for me that pays six figures at a regional law firm. Oh, I know, its not $160,000, but I didn't go into law school expecting the world - I f*cking worked my ass off for it. I succeeded on MERIT while many of the smug ones here failed on PRESTIGE.

So to return the smugness, it simply isn't a universal fact that going to a "top" law school sets you up for life. I'll be making six figures, and your derision of my market and my “peer schools” like Wayne State – derision spewed largely from the panicky fingers of middle of the class, jobless T1 3Ls - simply rolls off my back.

99 - let me guess - you don't practice in Detroit do you? If you did you would have said so. Most Michigan grads leave the state. And why is it not surprising that you smuggly think any school NOT UofM is garbage?

In the Detroit legal market, EVERYONE knows Cooley is the worst. If you actually practiced in that area, you'd know.

100 - it rolls off your back so easily that you spent four paragraphs on the defensive...and you will always have to answer: "Cooley" whenever you are asked where you went to law school. To which the informed response will invariably be a look that says: "What's that smell?" But congrats on all of your great success in a place where "people don't want to stick around". My, that really is "fantastic".

102 - attention to detail isn't a strong point of yours I see. Read again jackass.

TUITION RISES

ENROLLMENT FALLS

QUINN REMAINS (but hopefully Cooley won't ...)

I think 102 is 70. I bet he produces some epic memos.

100,

It worked out great for you because you don't mind living in a shit hole. Some people have standards.

To all you "LOL ZOMG TTT R TEH SUXXORZ LOL!!!1!!" - You can accuse the Coolies of being a bunch of frauds/morons, but you're just distracting everyone from the even larger lie - that law school is worthwhile for any but a very few.

Look around you. NONE of us have jobs. Not even for us at USNews Top 20s. The legal job market is at it's carrying capacity, and the job situation will get worse, not better. We were all deceived by the lawyer dramas and sage wisdom from our grandparents into buying the "dream" of being a sexy, intellectual lawyer.

Cooley students are no worse off than the rest.

"Cooley students are no worse off than the rest."

FALSE

108 - Can you honestly tell me that the stigma of attending Cooley or Ave Maria (the other butt of everyone's jokes on this blog) creates so much worse of an experience than the other 40,000+ JDs pumped out annually in this country?

I can share my experience, which I hope is illuminating: I' a 2L at a Top-20 (But not Top-14), in the top half (but not top quartile) of my class. I'm on a journal (but not law review). That being said, the career counselor at my school told me not to bother with OCI this year, because it would be a waste of time. Fewer than 15% of my class got a summer through OCI, and lord knows how many of them won't get offers. The jobs I ordinarily would expect in my position (midlaw, regional firms) either don't exist, or will go to students with better credentials. I'm hoping to take a position in a compliance department at a major company and get the hell out of the US after a few years

What basis do you have to say that a Cooley grad is in such a worse place than a student of a Tier-1 school - say, Boulder - in the third quartile? Is unemployment with a six-figure debt from Cooley so much worse than unemployment with a six-figure debt from Drake University in Des Moines? The problem isn't rep or rank. It's oversupply, which will spur a race to the bottom for lawyer compensation.

Don't kid yourself - we all fell for the same lies that Coolies did.

Amen, 43.

The ABA / LSAC (Law School Admission Council) report the type of employment (private firm, clerkship, etc.) with only a small percentage classified as "Unknown" :

http://www.law.com/pdf/nlj/20080414employment_trends.pdf

A similar breakdown by market is :

http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/composite.pdf

But, the ABA/LSAC survey apparently does not ask what the starting salary will be/was.

NALP gathers salary data based upon a separate survey. NALP's survey suffers from a low response rate (only 23,000 of the 43,000 graduates in a recent class responded) ::

http://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib

Reporting salaries of only half of the graduating class creates the misimpression that a law school graduate has roughly a 23% chance of starting at $ 165K (pre-ITE) :

http://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib

For the class of 2008, 42% of the reported salaries between $ 40K to $ 65K while 23% of the reported salaries were in the $ 165K spike.

Doesn't anyone else notice the flood of pop-up advertisements for various trade schools? I wonder what the over/under is how many years before a the "student loan" crisis makes the headlines.

I like to rip on Cooley grads just as much as the next snob. John Marshall is pretty sweet too. I grew up in Lansing and met a lot of Cooley students. A lot of the people planned to work in family businesses or had a successful solo father. There were a lot of people with wealthy parents that just wanted to put criminals away. Actually, since Cooley students don't expect to work in Biglaw (unless they delusional) they usually have a plan in mind and they are fine with a small practice. When I was in college, I worked for two Cooley attorneys as a secretary and they did quite well.

I don't think that attending Cooley is a cake walk either. I attended Georgetown and I know from many stories that Cooley students are ripped to pieces in class.

100--

It's a little beyond that. A good bit of this blog's commenters are far more dangerous than mediocre elitists who are forced to rely upon their school to make themselves feel special. More often than not, they are self-entitled, amoral FTT hacks who, despite lacking all common sense, work ethic, and problem-solving ability, nonetheless will find employment in the welcoming arms of anti-meritocratic, revolving-door incest pods known as East Coast BigLaws. While there, they will learn how to enable corporate criminal enterprise from the resident hack experts--carbon copies of their proteges, except 20 years older, 2 divorces deeper, and 30 IQ points lower compliments of their decades in the anti-intellectual echo chamber.

These lackeys do not care for Detroit, or any of America's once-great cities, because their goal is to line their pockets by destroying those cities. Your beloved Detroit to them is a cash register--and once they commit robbery through instrumentalities far worse than a gun, they will avoid any accountability for their criminal conspiracy through self-dealt legal immunity, compliments of their blue blood, old boys network.

It is a cycle that has destroyed America's cities even worse than a natural disaster, and killed more economic lives than Kublai Khan. But instead of being destroyed by the armageddon they scripted, the FTT criminal enablers will receive year-end bonuses for their evil work, which will represent a down payment on a second (earlier foreclosed upon?) house thanks to the gutted real estate market they created with their co-conspirators. Their lack of accountability is matched only by their lack of ethics and shame.

i feel bad for all of the cooley students reading this blog and realizing how there is no worse taint in legal education than a cooley degree. and as others have mentioned, its not because the school is inherently worse than other 3rd the 4th tier schools, its because of the retarded administration at cooley. cooley's insulting-to-anyone-with-half-a-brain rankings and greedy money-grabbing expansion (i'm sure i'm missing other things as well) keep giving the school horrible publicity.

i must say though, if you've enrolled at cooley in the past couple of years (since cooley's exploits have been given wide notice by by most of the legal profession), you're either not doing your research or you couldn't go anywhere else.

seriously, if i saw the name of 4th tier law school i'd never heard of on a resume, i'd at least consider the person and look at his/her gpa (would likely need to be top 3) and other qualifications. however, when i look at a cooley resume, i can't get past the cooley stigma, and judging by others' stories on this topic, that feeling seems to be widespread.

Third tier schools get a bad rap. I'm a 2L at one (although at the time I applied and entered, it was first tier...let me tell you how happy I am about that). I went to a top 20 university for undergrad. The school I go to was the lowest ranked one I got into (the highest ranked was ranked #32). The reason I chose the 3rd tier was because they offered me a full tuition scholarship. I'm glad I'm here. I could have gone to a (much) higher ranked school but then I'd be saddled with crushing law school debt...and I probably would not have a job. As it stands, I have an excellent offer to summer at a medium sized firm.

Here <--- Proud Cooley Grad who used the experience for what it was and made a better life for herself. Although I greatly desired to transfer, I was unable to for personal reasons. Anyway, I’ve worked with higher-tier graduates who have a misplaced sense of entitlement, which combined with laziness, has made them lackluster performers. My position is simply to just live YOUR life. Make your own magic (and money) – it’s the suckers slaving away at top firms (or recently laid off) whose lives are empty!